Blair Thaumic

Has MR2 sold out yet?

Ilka Horlitz (DPOD/Death Snare Pussies) Kate Crawford, Nicole Skeltys (Biftek) Vivian Looper (Luuli) Sofia Madudi (Sofiax) Miyuki Kasahara (The Antidote - Miyukette) All the artists on this: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Beauty-And-Venus/release/4418174

I'm still surprised that Brainfood has such a bad reputation... it takes me on a deep outer space trip every time. Goa-Head and Antic, you don't even like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4enbbvq6xU

From the weird to the insane! Neelix - No Way To Leave is a guilty pleasure of mine >_>

I'm interested in hearing some more stuff from the old days that wasn't melodic, but went in the complete opposite direction. I know we have a couple of threads for 'weird' or 'freaky' Goa trance, but I'm looking for atonality and noise in particular. Somewhere between 'normal' trance and what Merzbow might sound like with a 4/4 beat. Sag, Ketha Minh, Creative Alienation, the Scando sound at its harshest... you know what I mean? That kind of stuff. Give me something to curdle my blood and put hair on my toes, please.

Happy belated birthday!

I was an advanced kid in some ways... I started to read at age four. So I got books out of the library, or my parents gave me books, and I studied by myself a lot of the time. I did have math lessons -- long division, geometry, algebra, some trigonometry -- and my parents would drive us out of the city sometimes, so I could hike and get some experience of nature. Also they enrolled me in some after school programs, like arts & crafts. But I had a mostly unstructured education, with lots of reading and outdoor play. I didn't learn everything that I might have at public school, and I was definitely sheltered in some ways, but I don't think of it as a bad thing, just a different perspective. I'm still a non-traditional student. I spent my late teens and early twenties in various alternative subcultures (like goa), pursuing my obsessions while occasionally working part time or taking an adult ed class. At twenty-six I enrolled in a community college, and spent three years there taking all sorts of classes while getting into clubs, school politics and social life; that was my belated high school experience. Now I'm a junior, soon to be senior, at a top 20 university. I had a nervous breakdown at the end of my junior year and dropped out of college. I'm applying for readmission this year, and I'll be starting class again in the Fall; by next summer, I'll earn my Bachelors. After graduating I want to teach EFL for a few years, and maybe go on to earn an MA in education. Anyway, I can't speak for every homeschooler, but I had a very positive experience. The one thing I wish I'd had was more preparation for the academic stress of college and, in particular, university... if I ever have children I would probably homeschool them, but I'd look into online education to supplement that.

It does sound like proto-dark psy.

Full on is a style, and like any style, it has a few gems and a lot of dross. Same with progressive, dark/forest, and melodic goa. What I appreciated about 90s goa was that it wasn't a style. There weren't set rules for doing things. You had Astral and Pleiadians, but you also had Juno Reactor, Shakta, and Deviant Electronics. Artists didn't sound like each other, apart from a shared interest in more tuneful and head-expanding electronic dance music. It's never going to be the 80s or 90s again, but I think there are lessons to be taken from the past and applied to the present scene. I don't care what you call it. I just want to hear something that makes me move and makes me trip while sober. The rules aren't so important, and I think both psytrance and goa confuse the map for the territory sometimes.

Now I want to dig up something both terrible and completely obscure, so this doesn't just turn into a bitch-fest about full on. When I was new to psytrance I heard an artist called 'Ketha Minh' that I thought had to be the worst ever. This was sometime in 1998. I don't know if I'd feel the same now. ...OK, here's one of his tracks. Unmelodic, nonsensical, and badly produced, but for all that it has a certain "fuck you, I do what I want" charm.

I largely agree with Thomas Szasz's view on mental illness, though not entirely... it's reductionism taken a bit too far, IMHO. But it's true that, as a society, we call a lot of social and emotional problems illnesses when they aren't necessarily illnesses at all. As a young child I had a lot of problems in public school, which could have been diagnosed as any number of things if I had stayed in school... ADHD, Aspergers, social anxiety disorder, ect. But I was homeschooled instead, and I lived happily without treatment. I'm not saying that homeschooling is a panaceae, or that real brain disorders don't exist. But outside of a particular social, cultural, and historical context, I wasn't ill. And I think that's true of a lot of people who are called mentally ill.

Awesome set. I really hope to hear more from Cj Rcm in the future...

Part of me fears that this is just bandwagon-jumping, with the increased interest in all things 'old school' and 'Goa trance' in recent years. But if it leads to some cracking NEW music (and not just remixes!) I'm all for it.

I'm going to repeat what I said on the Unify post. Listen to Der Dritte Raum - Wellenbad and then listen to this. The psy-techno tracks (Fly, Compressor, Renania) are very much in a DDR vein, and Tribal Session comes off as the kind of drum/loop led experimentation Andreas did a much better job of in 1996. Indeed, it's only a sketch, and it grows tiresome. I blame Meteor for helping to start the unfortunate 'psytar' trend, so it's hard for me to be charitable towards it. One of the most overrated, overplayed, and over-remixed tracks of all time. Take away the guitar riff, and it's barely even a track. Those rough spots aside, there are parts of this album that I unashamedly love. Rock Da House is an insanely catchy breaks-goa confection, full of gooey lines and pounding Big Beat drums; and the slower, more pensive tracks that form the last 4/10ths of the album are without fault in my eyes. I particularly like the electro beats and bassline on Magnetic Field. No, it's not an essential album, but for at least 50% of it, it's worth a listen. This is Boris' experimental Electric Universe album, his dark horse if you will. Who knows, something in here might be the perfect glue for your next psybreaks or downtempo DJ set.

I'm using AKG K240 headphones with a Pioneer DJM600 mixer, along with my CDJs. Not an audiophile by any means, but I like the frequency response and overall cleanness of the sound. Quite comfortable headphones too.

I think I mentioned durian already, but why not? Durian. The popular variety of durian in Asian markets here is Morn Thong... contrary to rumors, it actually doesn't have much of a bad smell/taste, as long as you eat it fresh from the shell and don't leave it out to oxidize. When fresh, it has a pineapple/vanilla custard flavor. Pre-shelled and frozen durian is quite a bit worse, basically like car exhaust mixed with old newspaper. But I love fresh durian. The only other variety I've had is Gradoom. It tasted like a cross between a mango and an avocado, with just a little bit of smoke flavor. Not too bad.

Abasio, teaching English as a foreign language is something that I'm very interested in. I'm taking a TEFL certificate course next month, and I'd like to work in Asia for a year or longer; maybe quite a few years, if everything works out. I'm not looking at Japan right now, but South Korea, possibly Taiwan. Still, do you have any advice (besides the dos/donts already shared) for a prospective EFL teacher?

No mention of mirror neurons yet? Personally, when I hear about telepathy (especially drug induced telepathy) I wonder if it's possible to ramp up the activity of mirror neurons. IANAD but if so it might be possible to produce something like a more complex/accurate simulation of the other person's mental state. Not true telepathy but something approaching it, and for the person(s) experiencing it, it would feel like telepathy.

I recently finished Analog Days: The Invention And Impact Of The Moog Synthesizer. It's a decent book for those interested in the history of electronic music and (especially) the people behind it. Most of it is biographical, not for tech heads, and I wish the authors had dug a little deeper in some parts, but as someone who isn't really technical themselves I appreciated it.

From the little amount of time I spent with this album, it sounded directionless. Not bad, just directionless. The downtempo tracks were nice, but I can't say that anything stuck with me. I think you're being a little harsh on Electric Universe's albums, though -- no love for Stardiver, Waves, or Divine Design? Even Blue Planet was pretty good, when it wasn't trying too hard to sound like Der Dritte Raum. One hopes that Blenn will come to his senses someday!

Just for the hell of it I think Jens Walderbeck is a bit of a genius. No, really. Juno Reactor wouldn't have been the same without him... if you look at his tracks on the Transmissions album (and 'Rotorblade') it's clear that he provided a solid rhythmic/acid foundation for Watkins to work his string and melody magic. (I feel that, absent Jens and the other collaborators from a techno background (Maguire, Jackson, Stef), Juno's post-nineties work has never quite been able to get off the ground. The cinematic ideas are there, but it doesn't groove hard, and without a hard groove, no yin-yang quality.) His tracks on Dragonfly and Spirit Zone pioneered the Amsterdam sound IMHO... percussive, with lots of knob twiddling, atmosphere and space between the notes, but not 'minimal' if that makes sense. And Cwithe... how many good things can I say about Cwithe? The Cwithe album has so many strange melodies, weird arrangements, and just an overall sense of /fun/ that is missing from so much goa trance. It's almost magical. From my perspective, there's a similar interplay between Jens (groove) and Tony (ambience) as there was between him and Ben Watkins. I also think they VASTLY improved on the Koxbox track they remixed. I love the track Acid Lab - Happily Damaged too, and when I'm less cheap and lazy I'll see about getting the Acid Lab album, which by all accounts is an unofficial follow up to Cwithe. Now for the REALLY unpopular part It baffles me that Siblant and Metal Spark receive so much praise when Cwithe and Acid Lab are routinely shafted and ignored. For me, Metal Spark (other than one or two tracks) = average boring blah. I'm open to having my mind changed, I just truly don't get it about this artist. They're similar to Cwithe in a way but just lack the magic. Quirk - Machina Electrica And Fornax Chemica is another 'kind of' similar effort to Cwithe IMHO but never put the chills up my spine in the same way. I know a lot of people love it, though. Is it weird to get SO worked up about an obscure psy artist? Indeed it is. But I gotta be me. Have at it.

Well, as goa has its roots in synth-pop there is a precedent. As long as the artist adds something psychedelic or goa-trancy to the song, I think it's a great idea. Off the top of my head, Juno Reactor, Total Eclipse and MWNN did some amazing remixes of pop music. I'd love to hear a goa trance version of the bands that were already proto goa trance. Yello, A Split Second, Front 242, A Flock Of Seagulls... could be bleedin epic.

Digital Sun - The Spiral of Power (or Re-Collection) Tarsis - Vacuum Miranda - Phenomena Tandu - Multimoods Mac Mavis - Gate Finder Eat Static - Implant And Blue Room Released - Made On Earth

For progressive, try Atmos, Shiva Chandra, Beat Bizarre, Stereofeld, Human Blue. Tarsis - Vacuum also shouldn't be missed; it's from 1998 and falls somewhere between progressive and oldschool goa trance. For goa, you can't go wrong with the Blue Room Released label; make sure to hear the classic albums of Juno Reactor, Total Eclipse, and Koxbox. Also the old albums of Cosmosis, Transwave, Prana, The Infinity Project, Shakta, Sandman, and Electric Universe are all amazing. Three must listens: Juno Reactor - Beyond The Infinite Koxbox - Dragon Tales The Infinity Project - Feeling Weird